


Night 126

by 14CombatGeishas



Series: You Were Probably Happier Yesterday [3]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alcohol Withdrawal, Angst, F/M, Pre-Canon, Pregnancy, Unhealthy Relationships, former alcohol abuse/alcoholism, pre-Anne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 06:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10735839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14CombatGeishas/pseuds/14CombatGeishas
Summary: Doug Eiffel's life has gotten harder since Kate's pregnancy and giving up alcohol.  But, in the end, it's all worth it.Plus: a copy of a copy of a copy, "Toxic" duets, hair of the dog, PAWS, Sid Vicious, and Tony Manero





	Night 126

Nights like this were the hardest.

A drink would fix everything. He could practically hear it calling to him. There was a 24-hour liquor store a block away. He had enough money saved up to get something _really_ good. He could probably clean out a row of cheap stuff.  There was enough to make it go away. All this agony. He could just slip away again.  Just let it all go.  Nothing would matter and he could pretend he was happy just like he used to _._

It would be so easy.

_No, stop it._

_Stop it, Doug._

He rolled over and stared at Kate’s wall.  

The Sex Pistols poster was a little too on-the-nose, Doug always felt.

Kate had a few framed band posters in her room but the Sex Pistols poster was on the right side wall, facing the spot where Doug always slept. It meant that Sid Vicious stared at him.  His analog – Doug and Kate, Sid and Nancy.   Doug was just a lot less talented and managed to live a little longer.  He wasn’t sure if he’d make it to the 27 Club, though.  He wasn’t sure he’d get to the end of the week.  He hadn’t been sure if he’d make it to the end of many weeks.  Of _every_ week since he quit drinking.

He couldn’t remember the last time he slept.  He couldn’t remember what sleep felt like.  Sometimes his vision still clouded up and the world reeled around him, all foggy colors and echoes of shapes, _Fight Club_ ’s copy of a copy of a copy.  The world became an out-of-focus ‘50s film-strip played without sound.  Sometimes he thought it would be easier to just disappear.  To float way.  

He let out a sigh he hoped Kate wouldn’t hear.  She deserved some sleep.  She was suffering, too, maybe, probably, worse than he was.  Pregnancy sounded like a nightmare.

Things weren’t different between the two of them.  Not that different.  Kate and he swore they wouldn't be a “thing” anymore. They were terrible for one another. They drove each other to literal drink.  They were going to raise the baby growing inside Kate, and they were going to do it together.  But not Together.  Not a couple.  Separate houses, separate lives, one kid.

Four months into Kate's pregnancy, that plan wasn’t going well.

They were spending more time together than they ever had when they were a couple, Krazy Glued at the hip.  But it made sense.  There were two reasons for it.  Doug wanted to be close to the daughter growing inside of Kate, the unnamed little girl Doug already loved so much.  And Kate and Doug understood each other when no one else did.  

Mutual misery brought Doug and Kate back together again. Not officially.  But even they knew they were as intimately tied as they ever had been. More so. And, dammit, despite it all, Kate still mattered to him. He wasn't sure if he loved her, but sometimes he wasn't sure if he ever did, if that throw-yourself-into-the-fire intensity actually _was_ love or if it was something else entirely. But he cared about her.  Deeply.  Their relationship was familiar. It was like coming in from the cold.  

They were so, _so_ agonizingly similar.  They had the same likes and interests and the same sadness lurking in the dark corners of their minds.  They distracted each other from that darkness, when they enabled each other.  When they drank together, they kept it at bay just a little while longer, long enough to make it to the next drink.  Wasn’t that how they met?  Two broken, drunk assholes dancing at a club.  They were both singing along to the music, a remix of “Toxic,” when they stumbled into each other in the middle of the room.  They were singing into the necks of their beer bottles – the same cheap IPA – at the top of their lungs, barely audible over the roar of the club.  They sang a duet until the song changed, then: “I’m Kate!” “I’m Doug!”

He couldn’t remember what they talked about, but they left the dance floor and sat at the bar – drinking, talking, laughing – for hours.  Sure, he’d had other people in his life, other girlfriends, other boyfriends, other partners.  Sometimes they’d even been real relationships, but there was no one like Kate.  They went to her place when the bar closed at 2.  He woke up the next day with a hangover in this very bed, in this very room, staring at Sid Vicious.  He remembered rolling over and finding Kate still asleep, her back to him.  Then, she only had the skull and crossbones tattoo at the base of her spine, the winged heart on the back of her neck was much newer.  The sleeve tattoo of stars and planets and nebulae was only a few scattered constellations then.  He remembered hauling himself out of bed and starting to scope out breakfast.  10:30 a.m., first drink of the day.  Hair of the dog.  When Kate woke up they had pancakes and beer – that was when he realized she might have been as bad as he was.  He stayed until noon and through several drinks when she left for work.  They promised to see each other again, they exchanged numbers, and he called her that evening to see if she wanted to hit a bar.  She did.  She always did.  And that was it.  They were a Thing.  

Had they ever been on a proper date?  Was it just swirls of bars and clubs, or was that just all he could remember right now with his head pounding out its complaints?  He felt like Hulk Hogan had just slammed him with a piledriver.

They didn’t have their first fight in that first week.  When they did, it wasn’t as explosive as it would get.  Nothing was thrown at his head.  He didn’t sulk and close himself off in a bitter cocoon.  That wouldn’t happen for a month.  Then, after a few fights like that, they swore they would never see each other again.  That lasted another month.  It ended when they ran into each other at another club.  Then they went to Doug’s place unable to stay apart, unable to keep their hands off each other, unable to do anything but bitterly apologize again and again and again.  And it was like that from then on out.  Madly in love until they passionately hated each other, then they hated each other until they were in love again.

They were terrible for each other.  As dangerous as booze.

Booze.

Booze would be great right now.  

He could get up, get dressed, slip out.  He could get to the liquor store and back before Kate even knew he moved.  Tequila would be perfect.  Just one sip.  One drink.  One bottle.  All this doubt, all this fear, all this pain...it would just go away.  

_NO!_

_Stop it!_

Keeping dry hadn’t been easy for either of them.  There was nothing to keep the dark out anymore.  Anxiety plagued Doug.  Fear.  Angst.  He was forced to examine his sad little life and he didn’t like what he saw.  The last, Jesus, _10 years_ were a mess.  And now he was forced to face it, what he was always running from.  Face the fact that he hadn’t been as happy as he pretended to be.  That he hated what he was, what he’d become, but that he didn’t know what else he could be.  The roller coaster closed down and getting off was hard.

Poor Kate was dealing with both a life without booze and the fact that the pregnancy was emotionally and physically exhausting.  And Doug just so happened to hit his third whammy in withdrawal Let’s Make a Deal.

Sometimes he was still disoriented.  Sometimes the bugs were back under his skin.  Sometimes his vision clouded.  He couldn’t sleep.  He kept getting physically ill or just nauseous.  Kate and his friend Monique Roux were worried and eventually dragged him to a doctor.  The doctor told him it was called PAWS, which Doug quickly learned was far less adorable than it sounded. Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome. Continued withdrawal symptoms for up to a year after your last drink.  In other words, even _months_ later, the less severe symptoms of withdrawal sometimes hunted him down like Bobba Fett did Han Solo.  His own personal Dog the Bounty Hunter slamming him into the ground, calling him a slur, and dragging him away. _Fun times_. It meant he and Kate had matching morning sickness. Sometimes matching mood swings.

And after she finished screaming at him for “doing this to me,” they would often just collapse together.  Sometimes they would make love to escape real life, sometimes they would just lie there and ride off the worst of it in silence, holding each other while silently cursing one another just as hard.

They were both working:  Kate still at the same restaurant she had for years and Doug now at the Pizza Hut. It was not as much fun as he had hoped. Indeed, his first day on the job he felt like just lying on the ground and screaming, but his manager only let him do that for about a minute before he was asked to stop.

He groaned as a wave of nausea coursed through him, a spike of heat and a shiver.

Forget tequila, whiskey would be even better.  It took less.  Drink enough of it and it’d knock you right out, Dougie boy.  It wouldn’t even take a whole bottle.  His mouth was so dry.  Even just one glass would be worth it.  His head hurt so badly.  One glass and everything would stop shaking.  Was the real world always like this?  He would feel like himself again.  His old self, not this new broken thing…

“Doug?” Kate whispered in the gloom. Her voice was quiet, almost completely cloaked by the crickets outside.

“Yeah?” he asked, rolling toward her, so glad she’d broken him out of his thoughts.  So glad she’d been there to call him back.  He was tempted to just bury his face in her bare shoulder.   _Thank you, Kate, thank you so much._ “Did I wake you up?” He was whispering, too, which was funny really. They were the only two people in the apartment. There was no one else to wake up.  But then again, it was better for the pounding headache Doug felt like he had been suffering from since he took his last tequila shots four months ago.

“No,” Kate said. He looked at the outline of her in the dark, illuminated by the orange glow of the streetlight outside.  She had kicked the blankets off and Doug had curled up deeper in them.  Four months ago she cut away her half-hawk haircut and it was starting to grow in more evenly, long enough now to be called a pixie cut.  She lay there half-naked beside him and, as usual since she’d started to show, Doug found himself amazed by the shape of her body in the dark. The swell of her belly moved something in him. It wasn’t anything he could properly put a word to.  The closest he could imagine was “good” maybe “joyful.” But that wasn’t enough. That didn’t fully encompass it. Whenever he thought about hitting the bottle again, the thought of their growing child stopped him, gave him the strength to go a little longer.  It made him feel _happy,_ that imagined future, happier than he could ever remember being in his life.  “No,” Kate repeated with a dark laugh. “I don't get tired anymore.”

“I know that feel,” Doug answered.  He had started to think that booze was the only reason he ever slept at all. Had the world always been so loud and bright?  Had his thoughts always raced like this?

A silence fell over them both.  Kate was staring at the ceiling.  He wondered if she felt like he did.  If she wanted a drink as badly.

Just one drink. Who would it hurt?  He'd feel a lot stronger. A lot better. Shake off this PAWS bullshit. He might even be a better partner for it. He could take care of Kate if he didn’t –

Suddenly Kate grabbed him by the wrist.

“Gah – Kate what?!” Doug stammered.

“Shh!” Kate hissed as if she was afraid he would scare some small animal away. “Flatten your damn hand.”

Doug obeyed, opening his palm. Kate pulled his wrist downward and pressed his hand against her bare stomach. He gasped. He could feel movement under his palm, under Kate's skin. “Oh my God!”

“Right?!” Kate was grinning in the dark.

“Oh my God!” Doug laughed.

“I know!”

“That’s the baby?”

“That's her,” Kate answered.

“Oh man, she’s boogieing down in there like a regular Tony Manero!  Is this the first time?”

“Yeah, it is.”

All thoughts of drink evaporated from Doug's mind. It was the first time since he was 15 that the thought of his next drink wasn't haunting him. For a long while Doug and Kate lay there silently, his hand on her stomach, hers on his.  Their child moving inside Kate’s belly.  It was the most beautiful, most wonderful, the best moment Doug had ever experienced.  Those imagined situations with his hypothetical child seemed so much more real now.  Like he could touch them.  His daughter was real and alive and growing.  The future had never seemed so bright.  They, perhaps all three, fell asleep.  Doug cuddled close to Kate, Kate keeping his hand to her belly, and the baby inside, held by them both.


End file.
